Vladius

of_Kaiburr_and_Whills said:

SparkySywer said:

StarkillerAG said:

SparkySywer said:

Darth Malgus said:

I think it might be simpler to just do it the way the Star Trek EU does and let people choose to integrate or not integrate whichever canon they want.

Well, no. Unlike most of you, I’m a person who actually cares about continuity. I would like Star Wars to be a multimedia project, a single universe made up of multiple media that’s basically consistent with itself and between the various stories, as much as possible. I’m absolutely in favour of the existence of and official continuity, I think it’s necessary. This doesn’t prevent the individual fans to create their own personal Canon, and in fact I am the first to do so. But I think the existence of a stable and consistent official continuity is important.

Why

Why not? Canon isn’t the biggest deal ever, but it’s nice to have everything in a fictional universe be roughly consistent with each other. That way, you get to avoid the confusion that comes with insanely tangled multiverse timelines, and every installment feels like it “matters” in the grand scheme of things.

I guess I just don’t see the value in that. I don’t think either Star Wars EU does anything especially interesting with the overarching history of the galaxy so I don’t think we’d lose much by moving away from an overarching continuity. It feels like more of a novelty that pretty wildly different stories have continuity between each other.

I’m not big on the idea of all these interconnected stories myself. I think a better approach is to let different creators do different types of stories however they want to. If they want to form a continuity, the only rule should be no contradicting other stories. I think at its inception, Lucasfilm marketing wanted the EU to work like this, but what ended up happening was authors started trying to interweave everything. Miss this one book that came out three years ago? Well looks like you’re not going to understand what this is all about then.

Its also one of my least favorite parts about comic books. Miss a story or read one you didn’t like? Too bad, here it is in another series and you have to deal with it here now! This is a very niche thing but still, I personally hate not having a full story like that. This is going to seem bizarre to some but I did not like the famous Thrawn trilogy. I do however, somewhat enjoy Jedi Academy. It isn’t a big deal, but it is annoying to see Thrawn and Dark Empire Palpatine brought up in Jedi Academy, a trilogy that I think should be its entirely own story.

Just my opinions of course.

It depends on what you like and don’t like. Eventually you’ll run into something you don’t like either way. But it is cool when the things that you do like reference each other.

Anchorhead said:

Vladius said:

I like what they’re doing but I wouldn’t compare him with Han. Two different things that are not supposed to be the same.

No they aren’t and that wasn’t really what I meant. To clarify, I mean they’re similar in how they make money and that they exist in a moral grey area.

Han isn’t an unrealistic character either though.

NFBisms said:

On top of the finally competent execution and fiery writing, I just love how overtly political it is.

It goes so much further in its anti-fascist narrative than Star Wars ever has - placing responsibility for oppression not just on diabolical evildoers, but everyday corporate motivation - an upper class, the policing that protects their interests, the systemic abuse, and even the complacency/banality of those employed by said institutions.

The bad guys are all finally white guys again, and there’s no sympathy for a tragic antagonist here. The corpo we follow is a lawful, pathetic stick-in-the-mud with too much faith in the systems everyone else rightfully has palpable disgust/distrust for. A working class community gambles their freedom for one of their own. It’s not even calling out corruption, it’s reckoning with a capitalistic system working as it should (in spite of the corruption), and still being the oppressor. It’s angry and rebellious and has something to say I love that.

After years of having people complain black people in SW is political, this is actually political Star Wars and it rules

Dude settle down, if you want to go out and kill white people do it somewhere else

Anchorhead said:

After watching just the first episode, This was feeling to me like the Star Wars sequel the way I’ve always hoped it would be. Hell, after the first fifteen minutes I was there. It’s Star Wars meets Blade Runner, meets 1970s dystopian sci-fi. Perfect. Now, after watching all three episodes, I’m feeling like this will be my go-to from now on.

This is so far beyond what they’ve done in the franchise in decades past. This is an adult show with real-world issues and some very interesting and very realistic characters. Very mild spoiler below;

In my life, I can think of a real world version of everyone of these characters; The hard working blue collar, the jealous boyfriend, the aloof beautiful woman, the brown-noser, the tough talker in a bar - We’ve all known these types of people.

Diego Luna is amazing. He’s what a real-world Han Solo would have to be to survive in that lifestyle. Cassian isn’t a western movie caricature like Han. He’s much deeper. The whole show is much deeper.

To paraphrase a car commercial from 40 years ago; “This Is Not Your Father’s Star Wars.” 😉

I like what they’re doing but I wouldn’t compare him with Han. Two different things that are not supposed to be the same.

It depends on what it is but there are general trends in a lot of things that do get better or worse over time. For example, now is actually the best time to watch any of the movies from the past because we have much bigger TVs, screens, better sound systems, better physical media, streaming, etc. But the movies themselves could have only been made in their own time, which can’t be replicated.

Superweapon VII said:

Frickin’ blacks, feminists, and queers. They all need to go back to Africa, the kitchen, and the closet. Tolkien is for the white, super-straight ubermensch. Cleanse Hollywood of degenerate art. Deus vult.

what a glorious strawman

dgraham414 said:

Not to add fuel to the fire and run away, but the LOTR trilogy ain’t 100% Tolkien faithful either. Faramir’s character was completely changed, entire chunks of the book were removed, and rolls were completely swapped out.

I wouldn’t be surprised that if those movies came out today the outcry would be massive. I can almost see the YouTube thumbnails photoshopping Greta Thunberg’s face over Arwen and Eowyen.

Conversely, if this show came out in 2008, I challenge the notion that the backlash would be the same.

The cry for Tolkien purism may be true to some, the PJ movies had that cry (although so quiet in the discourse) but it just seems like a shield to criticize diverse casting and female main characters.

If your claim is that it’s “not Tolkien’s story,” then you probably shouldn’t be watching any LOTR adaptation.

This is cope. Book purists were extremely critical of the movies at the time, including Christopher Tolkien himself. It’s in hindsight that a lot of people recognized that they did a good job being as faithful as they were, but there’s still plenty of people that don’t feel that way. Faramir is a big sticking point. So is Aragorn being unsure of himself as king. No one ever thought anything negative about Eowyn because she was accurately portrayed, and so was Galadriel. Arwen had a slightly bigger role and some people didn’t like that Glorfindel was replaced, but overall it wasn’t a huge deal because everything else was still accurate.

No one has a problem with Galadriel as a main character. The thing is that she’s being forced into an action hero role that doesn’t suit her. Her complexity and subtlety was reduced to a simple revenge story. She’s arguably one of the more interesting and morally gray characters in the series along with the other Noldor, but you wouldn’t know it. She’s supposed to have some hubris and try to build up her own realm, and she’s known more as a witch or sorceress who enchants people and naturally draws them to herself. She’s not just a blonde woman with a sword.

As for the ethnic thing, LOTR is a story based on Medieval Europe and the perspective of those peoples. That makes modern people uncomfortable, but it shouldn’t. There are nonwhite people in Middle Earth and they tend to ally with Sauron, but the REASONS they ally with Sauron are largely a history of colonialism and exploitation by the “white” Numenorians. You could easily make that into a great, diverse story with modern themes depicting the Haradrim and Easterling cultures with more complexity and some characters that are heroes, along with their tragic persecution by both Sauron and the men of the west. Gondor and Rohan are not inherently good in the written LOTR. Two important story points are made out of Rohan’s harsh treatment of the Dunlendings whose land they took, and the nonwhite Druedain, who they apparently hunted like animals. You could even have the Druedain instead of the Harfoots/Hobbits, and they would all be black or aboriginal.
You could do something similar with the elves and dwarves as well.
When everything on screen just looks like the modern US, you lose any of that complexity. It takes you out of the story immediately and you’re reminded that it’s a 2022 TV show on Amazon getting marketed to as broad an audience as possible instead of a fictional world with its own history and cultures.

Tales of the Jedi comics
Knights of the Old Republic 1 and 2
Dark Forces and Jedi Knight series
Unaltered Original Trilogy
Shadows of the Empire
All Timothy Zahn books
The Mandalorian (if you could cut out any reference to the Jedi attachment hullaballoo)
specific video games, comics, RPG supplements, books, etc. on a case by case basis

separate prequel thing if the prequels happened:
Select elements of The Phantom Menace
Shatterpoint
Republic Commando game
Genndy Tartakovsky Clone Wars
Select elements of Revenge of the Sith
Kenobi novel
specific video games, comics, RPG supplements, books, etc. on a case by case basis

if you forced me to make a Disney canon of real movies that actually exist:
The Phantom Menace
Revenge of the Sith
Solo
Rogue One
Original Trilogy
The Mandalorian + 2 episodes of BoBF that are The Mandalorian episodes

Channel72 said:

Unless I’m misremembering, A New Hope kind of glosses over how exactly Luke, Han and the others manage to get from inside the Falcon in the Deathstar hangar bay over to the adjoining hallway in order to enter that small console room. Luke and Han were disguised as Stormtroopers, but how did they get Obi-Wan, the two droids, and a giant Wookie, out of the Falcon and through the open hangar bay in full view of any number of cameras or nearby guards?

Oh crap, did I just nitpick the Original Trilogy? That’s at least seven lashes.

My thought is that the imperials already searched the Falcon, and the two stormtroopers that were directly guarding the ship were the ones they called inside, then replaced. So the other people in the hangar bay weren’t really looking for them and they might be able to sneak by. They get the officer directly overlooking the hangar to turn away with the TK421 thing.

Darth Malgus said:

I think it might be simpler to just do it the way the Star Trek EU does and let people choose to integrate or not integrate whichever canon they want.

Well, no. Unlike most of you, I’m a person who actually cares about continuity. I would like Star Wars to be a multimedia project, a single universe made up of multiple media that’s basically consistent with itself and between the various stories, as much as possible. I’m absolutely in favour of the existence of and official continuity, I think it’s necessary. This doesn’t prevent the individual fans to create their own personal Canon, and in fact I am the first to do so. But I think the existence of a stable and consistent official continuity is important.

I understand that as well and I also like that. However, there are things in the old EU that I wouldn’t want to be canon even though they were all integrated somehow. I think everyone always had stuff that they ignored. For me it’s The Old Republic MMO, big chunks of the prequels, everything post New Jedi Order, and loads of cruddy books and comics scattered all over.

fmalover said:

TLJ is the only thing I love about the ST, and it’s precisely the one that ignored the fans.

This isn’t really true either, it just prioritized some “fans” (the Lucasfilm Story Group and people like them) over others. It’s still full of exactly the same kind of repetitive material as The Force Awakens. It follows the same plot beats as ESB and ROTJ. It puts the Battle of Hoth at the end and the Emperor’s throne room in the middle, but it’s all the same stuff.

The other issue is that it isn’t so much ignoring what fans want as just being actively hostile to the audience in general. Everything is some kind of bait and switch. Even if you like the plot for being subversive, the subversiveness makes it frustrating to watch. Oh wow a cool ship! Oh it’s a clothes iron. Oh wow Rey is going to find out something about herself in the dark cave! Oh she just sees nothing and her character is exactly as uninteresting as before. Oh wow Kylo Ren offers Rey a chance to ignore all the conflict and start a third way! Oh she says no and he wasn’t really telling the truth anyway. The one thing that everyone (fan or not) would have universally loved, having Poe and Finn go on more adventures, was deliberately avoided.

Darth Malgus said:

What would I have done if I had bought Star Wars in 2012? Well, to understand it, you first need to understand how the Canon of the time was structured. Before the decanonization of the EU there was a very precise Canon hierarchical system in place, which included five levels:

• G Canon: The Prequel Trilogy and the Original Trilogy
• T Canon: The Clone Wars (2008)
• C Canon: The majority of the EU
• S Canon: The stories written in the 70s and 80s, before the Thrawn Trilogy
• N Canon: The non-Canon stories, such as the Infinities comics, the satirical stuff, etc.

Anyone can see that this hierarchical system is very complicated, and that many people can get confused. So, if I had bought Star Wars in 2012 I would have kept the EU as Canon, but at the same time simplifying the hierarchical system by eliminating the S Canon and the T Canon tiers.

The stories that were part of the S Canon tier contradict the post-Thrawn Trilogy EU, so they were not considered entirely Canon, but only partially Canon. That is, the parts of those stories that didnt contradict the post-Thrawn Trilogy EU were considered Canon, while the parts that did contradict it weren’t taken into account. Now, since the S Canon stories were never considered entirely Canon to begin with, then keeping the S Canon tier is completely useless. So, if I had bought Star Wars in 2012 I would have simplifyed the Canon hierarchy by completely erasing the S Canon tier, and moving all the stories that were part of that tier into the N Canon (non-Canon) tier. Furthermore, I would have allowed TCW to have a satisfying ending to make the fans of the series happy. However, since TCW contradicts much of the pre-2008 established EU, then I would have eliminated the T Canon tier from the hierarchy, moving TCW and related media into the N Canon tier, thus allowing the Clone Wars Multimedia Project to retake its original place between AOTC and ROTS.

By doing all this, the Canon hierarchy would be much simpler, since it would only include the G Canon (the films), the C Canon (the EU) and the N Canon (the non-Canon stuff), and there would be much less confusion among the fans.

But my plans don’t end here. If I had bought Star Wars in 2012 I would not only have simplified the Canon hierarchy, but I would also have decanonized some works that before 2012 were considered part of the official Expanded Universe (that is, of the C Canon). Specifically, I would have moved the Dark Empire Trilogy, the Crimson Empire Trilogy, The Force Unleashed II, and the post-NJO novels from the C Canon to the N Canon. They are, in my opinion, works that doesn’t deserve to be part of the official continuity.

So, after fixing and simplifying the Canon hierarchy and decanonizing the stories that never deserved to be Canon in the first place, I would have started designing a film trilogy set during the Old Republic Era. However, to make sure that there are no continuity errors between the new trilogy and the KOTOR/SWTOR stuff, I would have made sure that the new trilogy followed secondary and marginal characters, characters that are involved in the galactic wars of the past, but at the same time aren’t related to the main characters of that Era (like Revan, Bastila, Vitiate, Malgus, etc). I mean, the galactic wars against the Sith were galactic conflicts, indeed, and the Galaxy is huge, so we wouldn’t have had any problem in creating a good Old Republic Trilogy without contradicting the already established stuff. And, of course, in addition to the Old Republic Trilogy, I would also have allowed the EU to continue to expand, allowing authors to write new stories set across all the Eras, and most importantly, making sure that the post-NJO period is completely rewritten, without other Skywalkers falling to the Dark Side, without the return of the Sith, but with new enemies and original conflicts. I mean, Darth Vader and Darth Sidious were the last of the Sith. The authors would have had to adapt to this reality and invent new, non-Sith enemies after the NJO, instead of retake an already extinct threat.

Finally, I would have placed Leland Chee and Howard Roffman in charge of Lucasfilm, to make sure that everything remained as consistent as possible and that the universe and individual works had as few contradictions as possible.

However, if I bought Star Wars today then I would apply a double Canon system. That is, the New Canon would continue to exist and I would allow it to continue to expand according to the already existing projects, but at the same time I would also continue to expand the Old Canon (Legends), applying to it what I have just listed for my 2012 plans.

I think it might be simpler to just do it the way the Star Trek EU does and let people choose to integrate or not integrate whichever canon they want. The fan favorites will naturally get referenced more than stuff that isn’t as good.

With that said I forgot to include that I would erase The Old Republic MMO and make a proper KOTOR 3.

BedeHistory731 said:

Superweapon VII said:

KaneStarkiller said:

• LISTEN TO THE FANS

Quoth the Stan Lee, “Never give the fans what they think they want.”

Indeed. The writer of Animorphs, Katherine Applegate, had a good answer to fan inquiries about the ending of the books.

War sucks. People die. I’m not going to write a happy ending. Deal with it.

Fans might want a happy ending, but the creator doesn’t always want the same. Fan-creator relationships can be fascinating, in the parasocial sense.

You can still have an unhappy ending that is satisfying. That’s the main issue. The example I use is what if, during Empire Strikes Back, a common rebel killed Vader in battle with a lucky shot, or a stormtrooper killed Luke with a lucky shot? Sure, that would be realistic. It can technically happen according to the rules of the world. It subverts expectations and people won’t see it coming. War is hell and respects no one. But that wouldn’t make a better story.

This hypothetical is twofold:

1. What would you do with Star Wars if you bought it in 2012?
2. What would you do if you took over now in the present day?

I’ll start. For the first one, I would follow more of an Avengers model. You might not like the MCU but people would at least know how it works, and it’s pretty successful. In 2012 it would still be somewhat fresh.
There would be three movies building to two movies, all making use of the most popular expanded universe material.
First would be a Kyle Katarn movie, covering the events of Dark Forces and Jedi Knight 1, mixing them together. Kyle steals the death star plans! (Star Wars: Dark Forces).
Second would be a Mara Jade movie, covering her time as the Emperor’s Hand, what happened to the empire after the Battle of Endor and the death of the emperor, and Jade joining the fringe with Talon Karrde. (Star Wars: Emperor’s Hand).
Third would be an adaptation of Shadows of the Empire, recasting Luke and Leia with new actors. This would bring people back into contact with the original trilogy characters, but with the familiar prequel setting of Coruscant, and introduces the imperial palace. (Star Wars: Shadows of Coruscant).
The big two teamup movies are adaptations of the Thrawn trilogy books, with some of the Hand of Thrawn and other books mixed in. Thrawn is almost always successful until the end and he pushes the New Republic to its breaking point. After Luke recognizes that Jorus Cbaoth is insane and isn’t going to teach him what he needs, and that he can’t rely on old masters, he sets about restoring the Jedi himself. The first new Jedi are Luke, Leia, Kyle Katarn, and Mara Jade. (Star Wars: Heir to the Empire and Star Wars: The Last Command).

If I took over in the present day, I would cancel the slate of existing movies and tv shows and give it a rest. I would designate the new Disney canon with its own name (neo-canon? D-canon? hyper-canon? who knows) and make it possible for new works to be created in either Legends or the new canon. Then I would focus on new projects like Visions and actually make some series out of those pilot episodes. Do Visions 2, 3, however many, and use the fruit that comes out of it. There would be the two big canons, but at the same time, I would de-emphasize canon in general, and encourage projects that have nothing to do with the existing material, or overwrite it, or do something else unique, only canon unto itself.
The other focus would be video games, which historically carried Star Wars through low periods and produced some really great stories and games. Whatever setup they have now would be dissolved and original LucasArts would return as much as possible.
Then I would make an alternate universe movie where Anakin didn’t turn to the dark side, bring back Ewan, Hayden, and the rest of the prequel cast, and make 50 bajillion dollars.

Channel72 said:

I really never liked the idea of Palpatine manipulating both sides like a puppet master. I would have preferred a more straightforward plot to the Prequels, rather than the “mystery” plot framework we got. The fundamental problem is that so many of the plot details and on-screen actions revolve around Palpatine’s behind-the-scenes machinations, but we never explicitly see how Palpatine does any of this, so everything is presented in very broad strokes and the outcomes often seem arbitrary.

I think The Phantom Menace is probably the worst in this regard. The entire plot is about an evil mega-corporation (the Trade Federation) invading a defenseless planet. This is a pretty straightforward sci-fi plot setup, but we never really know how individual plot developments map to goals/motivations of the Trade Federation beyond extremely fuzzy, broad strokes. They want lower taxes, so they blockade a planet, then invade the planet, then deny they invaded the planet, then try to force the local monarch to sign a treaty to legalize their invasion. At no point does any of this cleanly map to some clear goal like getting lower taxes. And it’s not clear to me if any of these actions make sense from the perspective of the Trade Federation as logical steps towards achieving their goals, or if they have no clue why they’re doing any of this and just blindly trust the mysterious shadowy hologram that tells them to do crazy things like invade planets.

I think the plot would have worked better if it was framed as a simple land-grab: evil mega-corporation invades peaceful planet to strip it of valuable resources, while Senate fails to do anything due to corruption, so Palpatine rides in as the hero standing up for Naboo. We don’t even need the Darth Sidious persona - let the Trade Federation have their own clear motives instead of obeying the whims of some shadowy hologram all the time.

I agree with you, but I still think Palpatine as a puppet master is a cool idea. In some ways, and I think what you said goes along with this, it would have been better with less dialogue and appearances around it rather than more. They give just enough to make it sound like there’s actually some logic behind it, but there isn’t.

Peter Pan said:

An interesting read on the trilogy, maybe Palpatine could have picked up on his involvement with everything that has transpired in his conversation with Grievous.

Other than that I feel like the Jedi are too gullible throughout the movies to pose a threat to Palatines plans. In TPM Qui-Gon senses that there is more behind the Federation invasion but he doesn’t investigate and in AOTC does nobody investigate the mystery behind the creation of the clones. Only in ROTS do the Jedi start to suspect Palpatine after he placed Anakin on the council and thereby openly challenged the Jedi.
This makes the plot feel less like a tense game of chess and more like a GM taking on an amateur.

100%

This is where a lot of people nowadays get it twisted. Oh the Jedi were corrupt and blinded by hypocrisy and dogmatism, that was their downfall! Palpatine was such a brilliant manipulator!

Actually no, as depicted their downfall was stupidity, as in not doing basic stuff that you would see on any hack cop procedural. Hey who paid for these clones? Who was building all these ships and landing craft for them? Why did Sifo Dyas order an army? Why didn’t the Kaminoans contact anybody in the Republic for 10 whole years to give them a status update or collect payments? Was it all in cash up front? (remember one of the only things we know about the Kaminoans is that they care about “how big your pocketbook is,” so it’s not like the money trail isn’t explicitly important) Were there senators that did know about the army and were hiding it? If there were, why didn’t the Jedi question them? Why was Jango Fett, the template of the clone army literally still living on the same planet where they’re still making the clones, sent to assassinate Padme on behalf of Count Dooku and the Trade Federation? Why does the trail lead straight from Kamino, the center point of the new Republic army, to Geonosis, the center point of the new Separatist army? Anyone care to examine any of this for more than 2 seconds?

All this gets waved away as “the dark side clouding their vision.” Which you would think is supposed to mean their ability to see the future, not their basic intelligence unrelated to the Force.

As for Clone Wars, we shouldn’t be reliant on an extra show for information that should have been in the movie. That’s assuming it actually explains everything in the movie, which it doesn’t.

Peter Pan said:

Vladius said:

If it were all that specific you would think Luke would warn Han and Leia that their son is going to kill them.

But what in TFA implies that he didn’t? In fact Leia’s moment with Kylo during the attack on the raddus could be interpreted as if Luke warned her that this day would come.

They didn’t talk about it. You would think it would have come up.

If it were all that specific you would think Luke would warn Han and Leia that their son is going to kill them.

Yeah. A lot of people loving the prequels now comes from:
playing video games with Clone Wars stuff in it
watching the Clone Wars show
laughing at funny lines of dialogue and memes
contrarian hot takes from people about how they’re “secretly genius”

It’s not because of the movies themselves, it’s because they like the shared experience of talking about them, talking about how they watched them as kids, or reading/playing/watching extra material surrounding them. Even then, most of their positive memories are about the ROTS payoff and not the first two.

With that said I do have a lot of fun with Revenge of the Sith and I like watching it. There are lots of little things I would adjust, which have been largely addressed with fan edits like on this site. But it’s not unsalvageable like Attack of the Clones or the sequel trilogy. It has some really good things in it, especially Obi Wan and Palpatine.

I actually prefer watching it as a standalone movie ignoring the other two, because then all the issues I have with AotC go away as well.

Another non-Empire enemy could involve the Corporate Sector, but that might be too similar to the Separatists.

RogueLeader said:

True. I know the canon novels have the New Republic paint Leia as a war monger, but she sort of was even if it was justified. I agree that think it would’ve fit Leia better if she was trying to maintain peace as a politician rather than just be a general.

So you’re saying that you would’ve had the New Republic on one side, the Imperial Remnant on the other, with their being peace or a truce between them, and the Knights of Ren as the main antagonists trying to stir up trouble?

It could be done that way or it could be that the former Empire is already incorporated into the New Republic, and so some former imperials help the Knights of Ren with an insurgency. I think they’re more enemies from inside than outside.

Sounds cool.

I say this a lot but try to limit the amount of all caps words in the crawl to just one or two.

I like it.

I don’t like that quote at all (even if I agreed with the ideas, the cutesy rhyming is really annoying lol) but I get your point. It would be more interesting to explore the ideas and actually grapple with them.

As for the Empire, I would prefer not to take the view that they’re just IRL nazis who have to be exterminated for all time, and if you don’t exterminate them hard enough they just come back for another sequel trilogy. I think it makes more sense if they’re a government that a lot of people consider legitimate and want to live under. Again, I think the Thrawn books and especially the Hand of Thrawn do this in a much better way. The Empire are the bad guys but they’re not completely incompetent, and after the death of Palpatine they change and adapt according to the circumstances. They get rid of their anti alien biases, and they enter peace talks with the New Republic. Leia goes out of her way to establish peace, which is the polar opposite of their idea in the sequel movies, where she is the only person dedicated to total war and everyone else is just too dumb to listen to her.

Somewhere along the line people picked up this idea that the Empire is only WW2 Germany and not also the Roman Empire or even the United States at times. Palpatine isn’t just Hitler, he’s Julius Caesar and Napoleon and others as well. But it’s so common now to see modern domestic political opponents as literally Hitler/Nazis that it produces a kind of tunnel vision where that’s all Star Wars was ever about, and if you try to introduce any nuance then you’re doing something dangerous.

With that said, either way, the main thing to be original would be to focus on an underground terrorist kind of enemy instead of a standing army that’s exactly the same as the Empire or the Trade Federation/Separatists.

The Thrawn Trilogy, maybe condensing and adapting three books into two and then adapting the Hand of Thrawn duology into the third movie. Maybe throw some Jedi Academy/I, Jedi/Kyle Katarn stuff into the mix in the second or third movie.

If I had to use the existing sequel concepts as a base, then I would delete the First Order, delete Starkiller Base, and lean heavily into the angle of Kylo Ren worshiping Darth Vader. The Knights of Ren would be an actual cult of Vader. Their acts would be more like terrorism and less like a military. They would kill and corrupt some of Luke’s students but not all of them, with maybe Rey being their newest student so there’s an audience surrogate for them to explain things to. The Knights’ goal would be more to destabilize the New Republic than conquer or destroy it, and with this they’re pretty successful until the third movie. There are too many competing interests in the New Republic (politicians, planets, corporations, the Jedi, criminals, former imperials, etc.) for it to easily hold together, and they exploit these tensions, probably using assassinations and sabotage, to cause chaos. If Snoke still existed, Snoke would be their leader or maybe their financier. He’s a ruthless alien warlord who got exiled out of the Empire and always hated Palpatine. For a prequel tie in, maybe he’s a former Separatist leader.

Their beliefs would be based on the silly ideas that a lot of current fans have about the Force and how it works, and they would see Anakin/Vader as the embodiment of Balance in the Force, as in someone who was equally attached to the “light side” and the dark side and found total fulfillment by seeking out both (something silly people also say about Revan.) They view themselves as “gray jedi,” with a utilitarian, ends justify the means sort of concept. It would be the task of Luke, Leia (a jedi), and Anakin’s ghost to impress upon them that Vader was enslaved by the dark side and he was not some kind of god of balance, he was a good man who was corrupted by giving into temptation and the power of the Emperor.

It’s up to our heroes Luke, Leia, Han, Chewie, R2 and 3PO, and their pals to defeat the Knights of Ren! Maybe because of the political stuff going on, they have to team up with some scum and villainy types to do it, like a resurrected Boba Fett or some other mercenary guys.